90% Of Us Know That Having 1 Day Job Is No Longer Enough For A Living. This Is How The 10% Take Action.
Some people deserve a lot of respect.
I know people want to have a life they can call theirs by observation. I respect that and understand that to be a natural sentiment, especially after committing 40–45 hours at work or school.
When I say that I understand, I mean I know we have to do what we have to and not what we want to. If we are doing what we want to already, discipline would not exist. The little boy can play his video games forever, is that not true?
We have to confront the change in our immediate environments and examine whether we have to start changing the way we think. This is what I mean: -
- Average Life Expectancy Is trending upwards.
- Retirement Savings are woefully inadequate.
- The Job Economy is getting exponentially competitive, nationally and internationally.
- Almost everyone is a graduate, compared to 1910.
Most of us consume news snippets like those above in a singular, independent fashion. What if we can stitch them together and form a cohesive story for our world today?
This is the story that I see. It can be immature, but I do not think I am far off. This is the storyline.
The Middle Class is having their necks squeezed.
The top 1% of wealth accumulators need not be concerned with these statistics because they can fend for themselves. The poor have help through wealth distribution from taxes and other government programs.
Good luck to the Middle Class. We are pretty much left to fend for ourselves.
We are going through life that is remarkably different from our parent’s, rendering their teachings irrelevant to this age and time. I refer to their paradigm of getting good academic results, getting into a good job, and work till our retirement.
Maybe I should not say that. It is not irrelevant. The word should be insufficient. And the way to reflect it best is in our savings.
How many of us get to save for our retirement? Most of us have to fund our parent’s retirement, healthcare costs, children’s college education, and our own living expenses when we are retrenched.
Imagine my anger whenever I hear financial planners making the following bold claim.
“A monthly savings program of $x a month compounded at 3% annually allows us to retire comfortably in 40 years!”
Look, dude. Times have changed. Update your script, please. If we start working at 20 years old and attempt to compound our wealth for 40 years until we are 60, then the question is: -
Is that enough for the final 25 years of our lives, where it will be the most expensive?
And that is not even about solving the immediate cash outflow issues confronting us today.
Passive investment is not going to be sufficient. We cannot continue treating it as our hope in life, that we will finally have enough money to do whatever we want at 60 years old.
We have to do something for ourselves today.
First Thing First — The Evening 6 to 9.
Treasure the 6 pm — 9 pm. Celebrate and relax when the time calls for it. There is no need to drink with our buddies daily. Take some time to work on our e-commerce business or side hustle.
I have an ex-colleague turned friend who blogs after working hours. He guards his premium post-work working time zealously.
There is no chance of getting him to hop into a meeting at 6 pm. He might just get into it to get an audio recording for future reference. He will not contribute. He is out there somewhere, banging at his keyboard furiously.
Writing, Blogging Is Not The Only Way.
I am similar to that friend of mine.
I write as much as I can, giving the empty time-slots I have within the business day. Besides writing, I trade the markets.
930 to 1030 in the evening (Singapore Time) are no-contact zones because I will be watching and trading the markets. Most of the action and trends are set in the first hour, and therefore I need to be present 100%.
When I am done at 1030 in the evening, settling my new trades and closing existing ones, I go back to writing.
Writing, Blogging, Trading, And Then Creating The Ultimate Asset — A Business.
We start off by grooming our high-income skill-sets. Writing, blogging, and financial trading are high-income skill-sets. We do not need to worry that we are out of a job with a specific company. Our skill-sets follow us wherever we go.
We can start a business on top of what we do best.
If you blog and can churn our 4–5 stories a day, you can start a company to sell content writing to marketing agencies or e-commence platforms.
When my ex-colleague did that, his monthly side income went from 20% of his employment salary to 50%.
Times Have Changed. We Have To Match Up.
We have to ask ourselves if having one day job is enough for our livelihood from now until we die.
We should live our lives believing that everything will be settled for us so long as we work hard for our families and employers. I wish that the world behaved this way, but it has never done so. I doubt it will ever do so.
And so, we can bring control back into our life by doing the following: -
- Understand where we are today, globally.
- Understand whether we are on track in life financially and supporting our families.
- Understand that we have to work hard for ourselves and not others.
- Understand that we are ultimately responsible for ourselves until we die.
If we can understand all of those, we will know what we have to do. Chances are, you will agree with me that we have to do more for ourselves, and not less.
That is the way it is, knowing where we are today.
That is how the 10% take action to take care of themselves and future-proofing their families.
Aldric
About the Author:
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure.
Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
